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<title>they know you walk like you're a god (they can't believe i made you weak) by thisismetrying</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29371278">they know you walk like you're a god (they can't believe i made you weak)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismetrying/pseuds/thisismetrying'>thisismetrying</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Queen's Gambit (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aren't we all though, Benny is a SIMP for Beth, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Light Angst, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-Canon, Post-Moscow (The Queen's Gambit), Sexism, Smut, kind of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:42:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,487</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29371278</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismetrying/pseuds/thisismetrying</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>From the outside, their story could look a lot like Hades and Persephone. The black king sweeping the lovely, fair Persephone down to his dark underworld. </p><p>He certainly attempts to cut the figure, with his black trench coat and cowboy hat and almost all black wardrobe. How he uses his knife to add an aura of mystery and edge. (His literal almost lightless tomb of an apartment certainly helps make his case for a dark underlord).</p><p>But Hades dragged Persephone down into his dark underworld, where he held all the power, and taught her how to embrace darkness. </p><p>They both know better than that.</p><p>-</p><p>or Benny has Thoughts (TM) about Beth</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beth Harmon/Benny Watts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>190</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>they know you walk like you're a god (they can't believe i made you weak)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from Halsey's "Strange Love" which yes, is also a Beth/Benny song, I don't make the rules</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Benny strides into chess tournaments (anywhere really) like he’s invincible.</p><p>And for a time, he is.</p><p>He is a state winner at 7, a champion at 9, U.S. champion at 15, grandmaster at 21.</p><p>Even when he gets his international title and starts playing in Europe, even when the games end in a draw or a narrow loss against some of the best grandmasters in the world, he still walks like he’s got everything, like he knows something all the others don’t.</p><p>It’s part of his charm, part of his carefully put on affectation. He maintains that a good part of chess is making your opponents think you’ve got it. It doesn’t really matter if you’re sure of the move or not, you have to <em>move</em> like you’re sure. And he has always been good at that.</p><p>He doesn’t need the cowboy hat, the obnoxious trench coat, or the mysterious knife, to make him seem imposing, unbeatable. It’s something in the way he moves, the way he walks. Of course, he doesn’t think the knife hurts.</p><p>And then Beth Harmon came into his life and changed everything.</p><p>-</p><p>He’s not sure exactly what it is about Beth, but he’s felt it for a while now.  </p><p>Benny doesn’t remember their first time talking (at least according to Beth).</p><p>But he does remember their first real meeting. He remembers Las Vegas, and the bright neon lights, and the buffet of drinks and how he’d been talking to someone about QGD vs. Slav.</p><p>And then he’d looked over and seen Beth. He’d seen her picture and the article in LIFE. It was rare that a chess player got press outside of the typical chess outlets. It’d been a big deal, he remembers, one of his friends had shown it to him, asked if he’d heard of her.</p><p>And he had. He’d always been good at keeping tabs on the up-and-coming talent in the chess world and Beth had made waves ever since she beat Beltik out for the Kentucky championship. He remembers reading about that then, when whispers of a young girl who seemingly came out of nowhere had dashed the grandmaster hopeful’s dreams (of course, Benny had always thought that that was exactly what Harry Beltik was, a hopeful, a wannabe).</p><p>So he’d kept an ear out for her name, like he did all the rising stars (he had a title to protect, after all). He didn’t get a chance to play her for a few years. She mainly played in opens with big cash prizes, and he mostly stuck to invitationals and championships. But the U.S. Open was one of the best, and he was the defending champion, so he’d gone and entered.</p><p>Of course, by that point, he knew how good she was. Anyone on the domestic chess circuit could tell you that.  </p><p>Did he think his crown would be threatened by her then? No.</p><p>But it still didn’t hurt to throw her a little off kilter. So he’d told her she shouldn’t have castled in her game with Beltik. He remembered her protest, the insistence in her eyes, how she’d walked after him, telling him she didn’t want to set it up and think it out.</p><p>He’s sure it got under her skin. He knows it would have gotten under his.</p><p>Of course, now, after a loss in Ohio, after five weeks training together in his basement apartment, after Paris and a trainwreck of a phone call, and then weeks without her, and then another trainwreck of a phone call, and finally a phone call that maybe made up for all the others, it’s Beth that’s under his skin, and he can’t seem to get her out.</p><p>-</p><p>The first time they see each other after Moscow is fairly anti-climactic.</p><p>He’s not sure what he was expecting. Maybe he was expecting a dramatic knock on his door, revealing a windswept Beth who ran to his apartment from the airport. Maybe he was expecting himself to finally succumb to the voice in his head telling him to <em>go to her</em> and get in his beetle and drive to Kentucky. Maybe he doesn’t care, and he just wants her.</p><p>It happens at a chess meet (because of course it does) in Miami.</p><p>He’s just checked into the hotel and is headed toward the elevators to his room.</p><p>He sees her unmistakable red hair at a café table, her elegant posture. She’s flipping through some magazine, sipping a coffee. She looks calm, relaxed, serene.</p><p>For a moment, he’s struck. He didn’t expect to see her here. He hadn’t seen her name on the roster. She must have registered last minute.</p><p>She looks a little surprised at his sudden appearance in front of her table, but not much. She puts down her paper and folds her hands under her chin, looking so innocent, like always, and Benny won’t lie, he feels his knees wobble for just a second.</p><p>He stands there for a minute, he’s sure, catching more than a few looks (he’s got his hat and coat on in the Miami heat).</p><p>There are a million things to say. There is nothing to say.</p><p>“Hi,” he says, finally. <em>Hi</em>? That’s all he has to say, he curses himself mentally. He is usually never at a loss for words, usually always knows what to say. But with Beth, it’s different.</p><p>“Hi,” she says, smiling. There is no ice behind it, no hidden motives. It is warm, friendly. She gestures to the chair across from her.</p><p>He takes off his coat, leaves his hat on though, and sits across from her.</p><p>“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he says.</p><p>“I didn’t either,” she admits. She keeps her eyes on him and Benny feels like he might melt, and he’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with the weather.</p><p>“Oh?” he says.</p><p>“I was going to lay off tournaments for a bit, get my life together,” she says. “And I did, for a few weeks. But I read about this in <em>Chess Review. </em>And I couldn’t stay away,” she says. She looks at him. “I guess this is my life.”</p><p>“Getting your life together?” he asks, the question hanging in the air.</p><p>She nods. “Yeah, I have. Been staying sober. Not getting high.”</p><p>He takes this in. He’s glad she’s sober. He’s not exactly sure what he would do if she weren’t. As for the tournaments, he gets it. Chess isn’t just a game to them. It’s a lifestyle. Though a part of him wonders why here, why this tournament. A small part of him dares to hope that it’s because of him (after all, in his most recent interview with <em>Chess Review, </em>he’d mentioned this was his next tournament). He quickly shakes the thought off.</p><p>He nods.</p><p>It is fairly normal from there. If they could ever be called normal. They catch up like old friends. She tells him about Moscow and Borgov and a park with a bunch of old men playing for the love of the game. He tells her about New York (it’s been the same old, same old, mostly). They play a game of chess right there, no board.</p><p>At the end, she touches his wrist, before she is off to an interview, and says softly “Thank you, for everything.”</p><p>-</p><p>They don’t fuck that time. Or the next time. But they do spend time together.</p><p>They play and they talk and they play and they talk. They don’t go to hotel bars or end up in bed, but they do something they’ve never really done before. And that is <em>be friends. </em></p><p>Benny enjoys it, enjoys her company. He has always seen Beth first and foremost as someone like him, someone who lived and breathed chess, a worthy player, a comrade.</p><p>But he can’t deny that a small part of him wishes they were more. Or that they’d at least <em>acknowledge </em>that they’ve seen each other naked.</p><p>And he hates himself, just a little, for this, but he can’t stop thinking about her. Naked. In his bed. Her moans when he’d kissed down her body. The warmth of her skin. The feel of their pulses beating together. The slide of their bodies. Her fingers wrapped in his hair, as tightly as she was wrapped around him, as tightly as she had him wrapped around her.</p><p>He tries to shake it off, to keep it at bay, and for the most part, he thinks he is at least successful at not letting it show.</p><p>If this is all she’ll give him, he’ll take it. He hates to admit it, but Beth Harmon could feed him crumbs for the rest of his life, and he’d gladly eat them.</p><p>-</p><p>The next time she’s in New York for an interview, she shows up at his doorstep.</p><p>Benny had known she was going to be in New York, had even invited her to stay in his apartment. She’d declined, saying the magazine was paying for her to stay in a hotel. Had laughed in good fun and said she’d rather a plush hotel bed than a slightly deflated air mattress. (He’d ignored the way his heart twisted when she’d mentioned that, at her assumption, and then he’d scolded himself.)</p><p>But then, Beth Harmon knocks on her door, in a somewhat dramatic fashion and says she’s there for speed chess. Benny can only nod, unsure of himself, unsure of her and her motives, but wanting, hoping, wishing, all the same.</p><p>They play one frantic game before an even more frantic disrobing ensues.</p><p>(They fuck on the card table in his kitchen and he’s sure the neighbors hear his screams).  </p><p>-</p><p>Benny doesn’t like thinking that Beth Harmon is his weakness. First, because he is Benny Watts and he doesn’t have a weakness. Second, putting Beth Harmon and <em>weak</em> in a sentence together doesn’t work. It just seems wrong. Beth Harmon is a lot of things. Intelligent. Cunning. The best chess player he’s ever met. Beautiful. But not weak. No, in fact, Benny thinks, she’s incredibly strong. She’s been to hell and back and she still won against Borgov.</p><p>But what else to call her when she distracts him like she does? So much so that he can hardly think, can hardly hold onto any moves or plays when he’s across from her. When she intoxicates him? So much so that when he walks into a hotel room and sees her lying naked with a come hither smile, he thinks he might actually fall to his knees and pray at the temple of her body. When she plays like Alekhine and Morphy in one (but better)? So much so that his carefully planned defenses are down in twelve moves.</p><p><em>Weakness</em>, is exactly the right and wrong word to call Beth Harmon to him.</p><p>-</p><p>They’re invited to an invitational in Los Angeles. The prize money is good and the weather is nice.</p><p>The games preceding the final are really just a formality. Everyone there knows it’ll end with <em>Harmon v. Watts.</em>  </p><p>But the real game doesn’t take place on the stage or in one of the grand hotel ballrooms.</p><p>No, it takes place in a hotel room, hastily checked into, the door slamming shut behind the crush of their bodies, blocking the hall out from the sound of their voices murmuring moves between kisses, upping the stakes of the game.</p><p>Cowboy hat off. <em>Pawn to E4. </em></p><p><em>Pawn to C5.</em> Blouse off.</p><p>Tangled necklaces. <em>Knight to F3. </em></p><p>
  
</p><p><em>Knight to D6. </em>Duster shed.</p><p>Buttons on the floor. <em>Pawn to D4. </em></p><p><em>Pawn takes. </em>Skirt down.</p><p>Boxers pushed down. <em>Knight takes. </em></p><p><em>Knight to F6. </em>Panties tossed aside.</p><p>(It ends with a draw).</p><p>-</p><p>After, when they’re lying in bed together, and Beth is dozing, he thinks back to the first time.</p><p>He couldn’t tell if he was mad or proud or both that she had so <em>thoroughly </em>beat him in speed chess. But what he did know was the thrum of desire that hummed in his bones that whole evening.</p><p>So he’d gone for it. He remembers the thumping of his heart. The erratic beat of her pulse. His lips on her neck. Her fingers tangled in his hair. The press of their bodies together.</p><p>And after. After, he had been so shaken, so flustered, that he’d been desperate to get back to familiar ground, familiar territory. It hadn’t just been the speed chess, hadn’t just been the sex, it had been both. The realization dawning on him just how <em>undone</em> this woman could make him, in every aspect. So he’d tried desperately to shift them back, back to where he was in charge, back to his color.</p><p>(It hadn’t mattered).  </p><p>He wonders, if he should have known then, just how far gone he was. He wonders if it would have even mattered.</p><p>-</p><p>He loves eating her out.</p><p>And from her breathy moans and the grip of her hands in his hair, he can tell she doesn’t mind it at all either.</p><p>He loves the way her breathing changes. Loves the way she gasps as he flicks his tongue at her. Loves the way she’ll squirm as he pinches his clit. Loves the way she tightens around his fingers as he works her to a crescendo.</p><p>He is on his knees, between her spread ones, a knight at the throne of a queen.</p><p>Benny has never been religious, but he thinks that this is what worship must feel like.</p><p>-</p><p>Not everyone feels the same way about Beth. (Of course, he’s rather glad about this, because he doesn’t think he’d handle jealousy very well.)</p><p>But it grates on him that not everyone sees Beth as the absolutely magnificent, absolutely <em>once-in-a-damn generation </em>top-notch chess player that she absolutely is.</p><p>Even though she won against <em>Vasily fucking Borgov </em>(a feat even he hasn’t managed, though many had placed bets early on in his career that he would one day), many men still treat her as if she’s still just some kid from Kentucky. Sure, since Moscow, maybe they’re just a tiny bit less open, less obnoxious about it, but still. He hates when he hears a bunch of second-rate players talking about the best games, the best players and Beth’s name doesn’t come up until he forces it to.</p><p>He hates the reporters too. They always seem to want to know what it’s like for her, being a girl in chess. Always reporting on what she’s wearing and why. Beth handles them gracefully, while firmly redirecting them to chess, but he can see that it annoys her, and he is annoyed on her behalf as well.</p><p>The worst of it is players who dare to think that being a girl in chess made a positive difference.</p><p>They’re at some open that Beth insisted on playing at for the prize money. (They don’t always play the same tournaments, but it’s often easier and more fun to meet up at a tournament than one of them making a plane ride or long car trip up or down).</p><p>They’ve both finished their matches for the day and are about to head up to their hotel room when they hear it.</p><p>It’s a group of men, maybe five or six, on some hotel lobby couches and they’re all openly pointing and snickering in their direction. They’re probably around Beth’s age, maybe a little older. Benny thinks he recognizes one as one of the new names that’s making some waves on the chess circuit.</p><p>This isn’t unusual, gaping in their direction. There are definitely enough reasons for it that come to mind. So they walk on by toward the elevator.</p><p>That’s when he hears it.</p><p>
  <em>“When will she learn that chess is a man’s game?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I heard she trained with Watts before the Borgov match. Slept with him in exchange. Still spreads her legs for him. Maybe that’s why he let’s her win.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Women should just stick to having children.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>He freezes. He looks over at Beth, and he knows, knows from the look on her face and her similarly frozen stature, that she heard.</p><p>And then his blood runs and his ears ring and he has an overwhelming desire to pull his knife from its holster (not that he’s ever actually used it before) and march over to those sacks of shit and at the very least give them a good scare.</p><p>Beth’s face runs through a million different emotions in seconds, he thinks. Some, he recognizes, like anger. Pain. Annoyance. Others, he doesn’t.</p><p>Her mouth settles into a grim line.</p><p>Benny starts to move, motioning his body to go over. But Beth grabs his arm, and gives a small shake of her head. Instead, she strides over to the group. Benny follows.</p><p>Her voice is ice cold. “Do you have something to say to me?” she smiles a saccharine smile, her red lipstick curving upward.</p><p>The men are silent, frozen, too cowardly to own up. Their Adam’s apples bob nervously.</p><p>Beth crosses her arms over her chest, her very presence commanding attention. Her words come out slick, honeyed, with just a hint of venom. “Let’s play a simultaneous,” she says.</p><p>The men start to stammer, to make excuses.</p><p>“You’re not afraid of playing a woman, are you?” She bats her eyelashes. “I’ll bet you $20 on each game.”</p><p>Maybe the men are overconfident or don’t know what’s good for them, or just plain stupid, but they take it.</p><p>Beth beats them all in under twenty moves.</p><p>(The next day, when she and Benny play in the final, Benny makes sure to play the best damn game of his life, and it goes on for hours (neither wants to adjourn), and when it’s over and Beth wins, absolutely no one can think that Benny <em>lets </em>Beth win.)</p><p>-</p><p>Sometimes, he thinks back to those months between Paris and Moscow and all the calls and all the things left unsaid.</p><p>He thinks of the things he’d said on a call right before Moscow, things he thought he wouldn’t be able to take back. (And he sighs with relief that he’d found a way to make up for them, to make a call to Moscow when it was most needed.)</p><p>He thinks of lonely nights coming back from poker to an empty apartment. He thinks of going out to bars and none of the women holding a candle to the redhead occupying his mind. He thinks of looking up from the board and wishing he didn’t have to play all the way through by himself.</p><p>He thinks, maybe, that’s where he really started to know. Just how much Beth Harmon had snuck into his heart, like a surprise queen sacrifice. He’d known because it had <em>hurt </em>so damn much.</p><p>After Moscow, before Miami, he’d asked himself if he’d do it all again.</p><p>The answer hadn’t taken him very long at all.</p><p>(Yes, he’d do it all again, in a heartbeat.)</p><p>-</p><p>He hears it at an invitational in Greece. He’s there as Beth’s second (and as her boyfriend, he thinks warmly).</p><p>Beth is up in the room freshening after the flight. He’s gone down to grab them a quick dinner to eat in the room while they strategize for the next day.</p><p>“Harmon has Watts as her second. He’s good, though, of course, not as good as she is.” Benny pauses, just around the corner, to listen.</p><p>The man’s conversational partner replies, “I hear those two are an item. That Watts is infatuated with her.”</p><p>“Infatuation? I hear he’s absolutely head over heels. He’s a cowboy Casanova in love.”</p><p>The men laugh. “Either way, they’ll be a tough team to beat. A black king and white queen pair.”</p><p>Benny smiles and walks toward the elevators.</p><p>-</p><p>He tells Beth about the black king and white queen pair comment (he leaves the rest of the conversation out).</p><p>“Hmmm,” she murmurs. “Like Hades and Persephone,” she says, holding up a book on Greek mythology that Jolene gave her before their trip, as she lounges on a chaise.</p><p>Benny considers this. From the outside, their story could look a lot like Hades and Persephone. The black king sweeping the lovely, fair Persephone down to his dark underworld.</p><p>He certainly attempts to cut the figure, with his black trench coat and cowboy hat and almost all black wardrobe. How he uses his knife to add an aura of mystery and edge. (His literal almost lightless tomb of an apartment certainly helps make his case for a dark underlord).</p><p>But Hades dragged Persephone down into his dark underworld, where he held all the power, and taught her how to embrace darkness.</p><p>They both know better than that. Benny tells her so. Beth laughs and lights a cigarette. She beckons him forward.</p><p>No, Beth has never been an innocent, naïve, fair spring maiden. She has always gone toe-to-toe with him, pawn for pawn, play for play, queen for queen.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Just saying, it is canon that Benny is an absolute SIMP for Beth (though I'm pretty sure every character in the show is/all of us are). Again, sorry, I don't make the rules. </p><p>Comments very very much appreciated! Thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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